Reporting on the Business, Art and Culture of the Active Lifestyle

Last week the Banff Mountain Film Festival published its list of alpine inspired movies scheduled to be screened late this month in Alberta. A whopping 71 titles will be shown over nine days at the Canadian Rockies’ Banff Center. With adventure filmmakers, authors, athletes and activists en route from around the world to attend, the 2011 festival promises to be an exciting event to kick off another great winter season.

On NPR’s All Things Considered veteran public radio reporter Alex Chadwick tells an intimate story of environmental activist Tim DeChristopher. Before he was sentenced to two years in federal prison for an act of civil disobedience DeChristopher and Chadwick spent several days together on a whitewater rafting trip.
Chadwick: Every time you write a piece you have to kind of figure out what the piece is about what the story’s about. I actually finished this piece before I really understood what it’s about. It’s about two guys in trouble who go done a river.

An interview with climber and writer Majka Burhardt Many Americans -maybe even most of us- begin our mornings with a steaming cup of coffee. That wonderfully dark warm beverage helps to kick start your day and put a little bounce in your step. But if you’re like me, you probably haven’t put a whole lot of thought into where it comes from or how it’s grown. That’s why writer and climber Majka Burhardt traveled more than 8,000 miles to discover the story.

Pink is not my color. But in the interest of saving lives I’m making an investment in a fashionable pink bicycle jersey created by my friend Kay Lum. Her goal is to raise some cash and awareness in the fight to find a cure for breast cancer. You can help too.

It’s always interesting to see how mainstream media depicts the world of rock climbing and mountaineering. Last night the CBS television show The Good Wiferevolved around a fictional ill-fated incident on an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. In an episode called The Death Zone, lawyers debate the circumstances that suggest one climber stole the bottled oxygen of another leaving him to die below the Hillary Step.
In a libel suite against a book written by the brother of the dead climber the alleged oxygen thief -one of those wealthy mountaineers who can afford a lawyer -justifies his actions, claiming a legal precedent. That’s what happens on an expedition.
“He froze to death and you left him, I left him, everybody left him. Why? Because we would have died carrying him down,” he said. “It is the law of the death zone. We all know we can’t be carried out.”

An interview with climber, writer and public speaker Jim DavidsonAs an adventure journalist I have the opportunity to meet some amazing people. And it was through the magic of social media that I became friends with climber, writer and public speaker Jim Davidson. We first got acquainted on Facebook. But last year we met in person at a café in the Canadian Rockies, a town called Banff. There he told his incredible story of friendship, adventure and survival that’s the subject of his new book, “The Ledge”. On...